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OHSU cancer researcher aims to make cancer a manageable disease

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Lisa Coussens and post-doctoral researcher Anna Wasiuk examine images of breast cancer. Coussens has received more than $7 million from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to study various kinds of breast cancer.

About one in three Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes, and close to 600,000 will die as a result this year.

Lisa Coussens hopes to dramatically reduce that number, making cancer a manageable disease instead of a deadly one. While traditional cancer research focuses on the malignant cells themselves, Coussens, a professor at the Knight Cancer Institute at the Oregon Health and Science University, is part of a new wave of biologists investigating the surrounding microenvironment. Her research indicates certain immune cells -- which normally protect the body against disease -- may actually be helping tumors grow. Now, she's testing a drug that stops these cells from aiding and abetting the cancer.

"Once we (understood) the key components that those immune cells deliver, our attention turned to blocking those signals," she says.

Cancer originates from a genetically-mutated cell whose offspring divide and diversify the make-up of the tumor, co-opting other cells to aid in its development. Coussens primarily focuses on specific kinds of breast, skin, lung and pancreatic cancers.

Her breakthrough work has attracted considerable financial support and numerous accolades: more than $7 million from the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, $8 million from the Department of Defense, and a host of awards, directorships, council and advisory board positions.

It also attracted the attention of Brian Druker, director of the Knight Cancer Institute, who recruited Coussens to OHSU in 2011 to lead his basic science division.Earlier that same year, the Komen foundation awarded $6.5 million to Coussens and two others as a part of its Promise Grant program, which is specifically intended to foster collaboration between basic science -- the research done in a lab -- and clinical trials, which begin bringing new treatments to patients.

Coussens, Hope Rugo at the University of Cailfornia, San Francisco, and Shelley Hwang of Duke University have targeted triple-negative breast cancer, which is often more aggressive and more common in young women and African-American women. Breast cancer hits close to home for Coussens, whose mother fought estrogen receptor positive , but has been in remission for over a decade.

Early research by Coussens showed that tumors in mice treated with a drug that targets certain immune cell proteins were more susceptible to chemotherapy and radiation. Currently, Rugo is enrolling women with a variety of breast cancers in a clinical based out of UCSF, but it will be years before the trio can fully analyze the findings.

The art of science

Coussens enrolled at San Francisco State University in 1976 on an art scholarship, but quickly turned to biology."The best scientists are creative people," she said. "So I see science and art as one and the same."

After graduation, she worked at Bay-Area based Genentech for eight years on anti-cancer research, then returned to school for her doctorate in biological chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco, proved a turning point.

"I made some, retrospectively, seminal observations indicating immune cells played an important role in the early development of solid tumors," Coussens says.

These discoveries have been central to her career and since moving to Portland, she's focused on translating what she discovered in the lab to reaching and treating patients.

This lines up with Druker's vision for the institute: to redefine cancer research by encouraging open communication and cooperation with clinical trials, ensuring the research conducted in labs finds the patients who need it the most.

"The basic science we've done is now in the clinic," Coussens says. "And we're doing better science than we've ever done before because of that."

Singular focus

Coussens hasn't performed an experiment herself since 2001 and can't remember the last time she wore a lab coat. But her role as a researcher, leader and mentor has catapulted her to the top of her field.

"She's very interested in her work," said Rugo, clinician at UCSF. "But she's also very committed to effective collaborations, she's very fair and inclusive. A lot of people who are very successful in research are the opposite of that."

When it comes to her research, the researchers in her lab all the same keywords: intense, focused, driven, workaholic.

Coussens agrees: Science is inseparable from her daily life.

She writes grants on vacation. She emails her post-doctoral researchers scientific papers from the beaches of Hawaii. Her brain's always on, always ticking, always looking for the next breakthrough in cancer research.

"It's who I am," Coussens says. "I work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week wherever I am. It's nothing that you leave at work."